Saturday Morning Ridiculousness: Super Friends S1 Ep16

Season 1 – Episode 16: “The Watermen”

Air date was December 22, 1973

Short Synopsis: Two aliens, Zara and Horo, from a water planet, are extracting silicon from sea water, “turning it from blue to grey.” Those bastards! Their people use silicon for fuel. And this is somehow causing red tide to show up in the places that they are…..arghphflllllarrrb.

This was another painful episode. You know it’s not working and is going to be bad when it’s narrator-heavy: “Wonder Woman takes the toast from the toaster, puts the toast on the center of a plate, opens the utensils drawer and grabs a butter knife. Sensing her toast needs butter because that will make it taste better, Wonder Woman rushes to the refrigerator and grabs the butter. Carefully, and with precise skill, she dips the knife into the butter and spreads the butter on her knife across the toast.” That is a more interesting version of what a narrator-heavy episode is like.

Here’s what the water people look like. Notice Zara can turn her head all the way around like an owl:
Their alien race is technically superior to ours, except for the designing and wearing of pants.YESSSSS!
Aquaman points.

WTF Screenshots:
Uh, who’s arm and hand is this?

“Put it on full thrutle!”

“Wait, sorry, I meant throttle.”

“Nope, thrutle. Thrutle.”

Wendy sits too close in addition to being a close-talker. And, she’s a giant.

This is Superman using a “Hollywood wind machine” (yes, he went to a movie studio to get it) to remove a ton of starfish from a the corral reef.

Darth Vader chopped off Wendy’s hand.

This is the Super Friends version of how different alien lifeforms will be from humans.
This is real dialog:

Horo: Maybe it’s time for the motorboat and me to play another game of chicken.
Zara: Chicken!?
Horo: I mean “duck.” THEY call it “chicken!”

You almost did me in, Super Friends.
This episode had me rolling my eyes and shaking my head 80% of the time. It was horrible. Horrible. The episode ended with the Super Friends finally catching up to, and finding the water people, easily solving their silicon problem, then wrapping everything up with a game of water polo – because that’s what you do when your alien race had, up to that point, been desperate to get back home. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same.

This was the last episode of season 1. Did you know there was almost four years between the first season of Super Friends and the second, which was re-named “The All-New Super Friends Hour?” You didn’t? And you didn’t need to? Oh, shut up.

I have yet to invest in the second season DVDs, so I’ll be taking a break before I dive in again. That break may be a while, so if you feel your heart will be broken if I wait too long, leave a comment and guilt trip me. Example: “Oh, that’s ok, Carrie, you can take all the time you need. The doctor says I only have three weeks to live, but you do what you think is best.” Or, send out a TroubAlert. Nobody will do anything about it, but it may make you feel better.

I got the impression that Wendy was bored and just put her hand into her shirt for, you know, fun, but the Darth Vader theory is superior. I always go full thrutle. Yes, he’s superman, but aren’t there some issues with running an electric motor fan underwater? Wait, why is he removing starfish in the first place? The tight wearing freak is unbalancing a delicate eco-system. Superman is the cause of global warming.

Another awesome episode, and I hope to be more diligent in reading your weekly posts when you return with season 2!

1) I’m ok with Robin being gay. A man’s obvious sexuality has nothing to do with fighting crime and being fancy security guards.

2) Wonder Woman using butter in the early 1970s was just wrong. Paula Deen may have tha diabeetus now but Wonder Woman shoudl have known that replacing butter with a substitute was teh way to go, even then.

3) I think world of you but my complete blind loyalty of the superfriends as a child explains a lot of my neurosis today….I think I should be mad at you for showing these eps, but Im not. I thank you

My college roommate Electrical Engineering professor asked his assembled students where they might go to find pure silicon to use for semiconductors. The class was silent for a while, and nobody really answered.

“Sand!” he thundered, “Go to the beach! It’s everywhere!”

You know where there ISN’T much silicon? In sea water. Like. . . not really any at all. It’s essentially insoluble. Stupidest aliens ever.